I'm a science journalist and author of "Distant Wanderers: the Search for Planets Beyond the Solar System" who writes about over-the-horizon technology, primarily astronomy and space science. I’m a former Hong Kong bureau chief for Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine and former Paris-based technology correspondent for the Financial Times newspaper who has reported from six continents. A 1998 winner in the Royal Aeronautical Society's Aerospace Journalist of the Year Awards (AJOYA), I’ve interviewed Nobel Prize winners and written about everything from potato blight to dark energy. Previously, I was a film and arts correspondent in New York and Europe, primarily for newspaper outlets like the International Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe and Canada's Globe & Mail. Recently, I've contributed to Scientific American.com, Nature News, Physics World, and Yale Environment 360.com. I'm a current contributor to Astronomy and Sky & Telescope and a correspondent for Renewable Energy World. Twitter @bdorminey

Living The Interstellar Sci-Fi Future: Next Stop Proxima Centauri?

In this age of angst, could interstellar travel possibly be any further from the national psyche?

It’s hardly as if we are all still huddled in front of our Apollo-era television sets hanging on Frank McGee’s every word. But who doesn’t long to be inspired?

A half century into the era of manned space flight, we have spent almost all of that time mired in low earth orbit. Not that anyone should be expected to automatically rattle off the ten nearest stellar systems, but aren’t we a bit behind the curve on getting out of ours?

I have high hopes for the space-mining industry and only the fondest memories of the Apollo missions. But it’s worth playing a bit of “coulda, woulda, shoulda.”

Although NASA’s two Voyager craft are now on the verge of interstellar space at the outermost boundaries of our own solar system, we have yet to attempt to send a probe to Proxima Centauri, our nearest stellar neighbor.

Fifteen years ago, I wrote about a NASA JPL study on the potential for an interstellar precursor mission as a first step toward the design of an unmanned probe to the Alpha Centauri system itself, of which Proxima Centauri is a part. Sending a probe all the way there, even at the, as yet, unobtainable speed of a tenth that of light, would still require more than four decades of travel time.

Granted, sending a probe to a star that is more than 4 light years distant is no trifling matter. But if we had only fully capitalized on the impetus of the Apollo era’s lunar triumphs, just imagine where the resulting technology might have taken us. It’s not for nothing that necessity is dubbed the mother of invention.

It is, however, worth looking at the lengths to which our ancestors went simply to move from one island to another. For millennia, the Polynesian peoples have been risking their lives in canoes; navigating open water from one island outpost to another, using nothing more than their knowledge of the sea, the sun, and the most rudimentary means of navigation. Within 5000 years of moving off the southeastern coast of what is now mainland China, groups of Austronesian speakers (or Austronesians) had settled the farthest reaches of the equatorial and South Pacific — from New Zealand and Hawaii to the Marquesas and Easter Island.

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“Sending a probe all the way there, even at the, as yet, unobtainable speed of a tenth that of light, would still require more than four decades of travel time . . . . The physics of getting there remains a challenge, but is not insurmountable.”

Bruce, there are two issues here, feasibility versus viability.

Yes, it is feasible to send a rocket to the Moon, Mars & Beyond. But is it viable to build a commercial enterprise around rocket technology?

An asteroid mining venture where a single rock is worth $500 billion? Yes.

A space tourism venture where passengers pay $250 for a round trip to the Moon? No.

The second is the problem the space & scientific communities are not addressing. For that matter the first has only recently became viable. It wasn’t viable 10 years ago.

40 years to get to Proxima Centauri is just barely feasible, as the astronauts would be in their 80s at best. Rockets are not viable, for such a venture. What about getting back?

As the author “An Introduction to Gravity Modification” (http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1612330894), based on a 12-year study on the subject, I can assure that change is here. Imagine semiconductor chips creating artificial gravitational fields.

The discovery of the new formula for gravitational acceleration g=(tau)c^2 that does not require us to know the mass of the planet or star to calculate the gravitational acceleration, lends itself to force field propulsion technologies. (Besides messing with our theories on dark matter.)

Talk to any physicist and they will tell this is not possible. I took the perspective that if a 100,000 of our best minds could not solve the gravity modification problem using relativistic, quantum & string theories, then who was I to even try. Was I more learned? No. Was I more skilled? No. Was I more talented? No. Was I better equipped? No. Did I have bigger budgets? No. But I had a different perspective.

From their view, I agree with these scientists that relativistic, quantum & string theories make this an impossible task. I used a different approach, process models, and my first breakthrough was the massless g=(tau)c^2.

The problem is with their tools, not with the minds!

How did I do this? I ignored Niels Bohr, who is reputed to have said all that was necessary was the equation. However, Morris Kline in ‘Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty’ shows us that one can use mathematics to say anything. Therefore, a grounding was required – physical representation – or process models.

And coming back full circle, viability will be achieved when we replace rockets with force field engines.

Thanks for your comment. I won’t address all the points you raise but do want to say that while feasibility and viability are important, either one can get the job done. That’s particularly true if society takes the long view when doing the hard work of cathedral-building that is inherently at the heart of any interstellar mission, manned or unmanned.

I didn’t raise the specter of a manned interstellar mission directly, but rather why we as a society had avoided doing the heavy lifting required of designing an interstellar probe of any stripe. I’m sanguine enough to believe that humanity will get there. Because of a recent story I did about human hibernation studies; they are advancing at a nice clip due to what bio-researchers are learning from bear hibernation, then I don’t think even manned interstellar flight will be impossible.

Remember at the beginning of this century, respected astronomer William Pickering made the rather odd pronouncement that powered aircraft flight across the Atlantic was likely an impossibility. Thankfully, Lindbergh proved him wrong in fairly short order. Don’t ever underestimate human ingenuity and physics itself. That’s the take away here.

Bruce, for me ‘real’ interstellar travel is about manned space flight, and that means figuring out how to ‘get around’ the velocity of light limitation.

I don’t underestimate human ingenuity, because I solved the garvity modification problem over a period of 12 years, while Michio Kaku in his April 25 2008 The Space Show interview said that this would take several hundred years. My point was that human ingenuity can get stuck in a dead end if we use the incorrect tools.